Mexico's 2nd in command dies in helicopter crash

In this Wednesday July 14, 2010, Mexico's Interior Minister Francisco Blake Mora attends his his swearing in ceremony at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City. The Mexican government said Friday Nov. 11, 2011, that Mora, Mexico's No. 2 government official next to the president, has died in a helicopter crash with seven others, including the pilot. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
— AP

In this Wednesday July 14, 2010, Mexico's Interior Minister Francisco Blake Mora attends his his swearing in ceremony at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City. The Mexican government said Friday Nov. 11, 2011, that Mora, Mexico's No. 2 government official next to the president, has died in a helicopter crash with seven others, including the pilot. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
/ AP

José Francisco Blake Mora, Mexico’s second-ranking official, was killed Friday along with seven others in a helicopter crash south of Mexico City. As interior minister, he played a major role in President Felipe Calderón’s campaign against drug traffickers.

Blake, 45, was a Tijuana native who rose from humble beginnings to the country’s top echelons of power. He was the second Mexican interior minister to die in an aviation incident in three years.

“He was, more than anything, a great Mexican who deeply loved his country and served it until the final moment of his life,” Calderón, at times visibly shaken, said during a news conference. He described Blake as “skilled, firm and at the same time conciliatory.”

Throughout Friday, there was widespread discussion in Mexican media and social-networking sites about whether the crash involved foul play.

Calderón sought to quell speculation that Blake might have been targeted for assassination, saying that cloudy conditions “make us think that it was probably an accident.” The president promised an exhaustive investigation by Mexico’s Communications and Transportation Secretariat.

The White House said President Barack Obama called Calderón to extend his condolences. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also expressed her sympathies in a statement, describing Blake and his team as valuable partners on a range of matters.

Mexico’s interior ministry has lacked stable leadership; the agency’s top position has changed hands four times in the past five years.

In particular, “Two secretaries killed in three years is of huge ... importance, even if it won’t bring the government to a standstill,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

While Blake did not oversee the Calderón administration’s battle against drug cartels, Selee said, he was a “pivotal figure” in pushing through security and political initiatives. “He was the point person for congressional reforms and the relationship with the governors.”

Blake was reserved and quiet, said Jeffrey Weldon, a political scientist at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

But it was clear that Blake had taken on the issue of public security as one of his main projects, Weldon said. “He was one of the top actors in Calderón’s (drug) strategy. He certainly had an image of being hard-line.”

Blake was scheduled to inaugurate a conference on judicial reforms in Xochitepec, near Cuernavaca. His helicopter left a military base in Mexico City at 8:45 a.m., but didn’t reach the event site by the scheduled time of 9:30 a.m. Search-and-rescue teams eventually found the wreckage, said Dionisio Pérez-Jácome Friscione, the Mexican secretary of communications and transportation.

No one survived the crash, which occurred in brushy and uneven terrain near the community of Temamatla. Accompanying Blake was Felipe de Jesús Zamora Castro, a deputy secretary in charge of legal and human rights issues. Also killed was José Alfredo García Medina, head spokesman for the interior ministry, who got his start in Tijuana as a reporter for the investigative newsweekly Zeta.

Calderón named Juan Marcos Gutiérrez, a former Tijuana official and Mexican consul in Los Angeles and currently a high-ranking member of the interior ministry, to lead the agency until a new secretary is named.

The crash prompted Calderón to cancel his trip to Hawaii for the Asia-Pacific Cooperation Forum. In Baja California, Gov. José Guadalupe Osuna Millán canceled a trip to Israel and instead flew to Mexico City.

Blake’s roots in Baja California run deep. His parents owned a curio shop on Avenida Revolución in Tijuana, and he earned a law degree at the Autonomous University of Baja California.

His first public-service job was in 1992 as an official in the administration of former Tijuana Mayor Héctor Osuna Jaime. In 1995, Blake became a member of the Tijuana City Council under then-mayor Osuna Millán.

Blake forged close ties with Calderón while both served as federal congressmen between 2000 and 2003. After Osuna Millán became governor of Baja California in 2007, he named Blake to the state’s top cabinet position — secretary general.

“It was an open secret” that Blake planned to run for governor of Baja California in 2013, said Jorge D’Garay, a public relations consultant in Tijuana. Blake is survived by his wife, son and daughter.

He is the second interior minister under Calderón to be killed during air travel. In November 2008, Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo died along with seven others when a government jet crashed in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood during rush hour. Authorities ruled that the crash was an accident.